Tuazon & Einarsson exhibition review

For your reading pleasure: here is a link to the new Tokyo Weekender review of the latest Rat Hole gallery exhibition. 

Happy New Year! Top Tokyo Exhibitions of 2010

To celebrate the glorious end of Tokyo's 2010 exhibition year I put together the list of three of my favorite shows of the year. For the sake of even distribution I picked one show by an emerging gallery, one show by an established gallery and one museum show. 

Venue: TANA Bookshelf Gallery

Exhibition: SHIBUHAUSE installation

SHIBUHAUSE exhibition/performance installation view 

 Why: TANA was my most exciting discovery of the year. This new gallery unhinged itself from the constrictions brought on by commercial pressures without compromising its creative ambitions. Great new addition to the Tokyo art world.

Venue: Rat Hole Gallery

Exhibition: Miwa Yanagi "Lullaby"

“Lullaby,” 2009, 12 minutes, edition of 5, image courtesy of the gallery

Why: This show cleverly combined the works from an older photographic Fairy Tales series (2004–2006) with the her new video work Lullaby (2009) using the images in the photographs as a poetic key to unlock the symbolic cache of the video. I reviewed this show in the May 2010 issue of Artforum.

 

 

Venue: Mori Art Museum

Exhibition: Roppongi Crossing: Can there be Art?

KAMI & friends scateboarding performance, photo Joji Shimamoto

Why: This super-sized exhibition, for all the faults other reviewers noticed, definitely succeeded in showing the multifarious character of contemporary Japanese art. 

 

Nobuyoshi Araki

Nobuyoshi Araki, “Koki No Shashin : Photographs of A Seventy Year Old” 2010, RP Direct print, Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery

With the big anniversary exhibition “Koki No Shashin : Photographs of A Seventy Year Old” at the Taka Ishii gallery having just closed, "the ultimate photographer" is featuring more of his latest work in a new show at the Rat Hole Gallery in Omotesando. It coincides with the release of Araki's most recent publication "Sentimental Journey, Spring Journey." You might even be able to get a glimpse at the man himself at the opening reception scheduled for 7 pm on June 11.

"Lullaby" by Miwa Yanagi

"Lullaby," 2009, 12 minutes, edition of 5, image courtesy of the gallery

Kyoto-based photographer Miwa Yanagi is known for her series of images that examine actual and mythical female identities. Her heroines are devoid of commonplace anxiety of time-triggered decay; they only gain from aging that brings the long-sought liberation from their circumscribed societal roles. Yanagi's 2009 cycle of digital photographs "Windswept Women" was chosen to represent Japan at the 53rd Venice Biennale and generated quite a range of critical reactions. Last year she was also exhibited at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and at the National Museum of Art in Osaka. Her latest work is now on view at the Rat Hole Gallery gallery in Omotesando. The centerpiece of the eponymous show—a twelve-minute video "Lullaby" is in a dialogue with several of the artist's silver gelatin prints from the fairy tale series of 2004–2006.

I will follow-up with a link to the full review of the Rat Hole Gallery exhibition in the next few days.